SILA Project Trainings Continuing On

Oct 1, 2017

‘‘Determination of Legal Aid Needs and Improvement of Legal Aid Services’’ training was held in the city of Gaziantep on September 16, 2017 in the scope of ‘‘Support to the Improvement of Legal Aid Practices for Access to Justice for All in Turkey (SILA)” Project, implemented by the Union of the Turkish Bar Associations as the Implementing Partner, the Ministry of Justice General Directorate of Criminal Affairs as the Cooperating Partner, with the support of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and financed by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) and the Union of the Turkish Bar Associations.

In the context of the project initiated on September 2015, one-day training sessions will be organized for a total of 200 lawyers in cooperation with Gaziantep, Hatay, Kahramanmaraş, Kilis, Osmaniye and Şanlıurfa Bar Associations under the scope of component V. The ultimate objective of the training sessions is to contribute to the professional improvement of lawyers who provide legal aid services for disadvantaged groups including the Syrian population in Turkey, woman, children and LGBTI. In other words, the main purpose of the training sessions is to raise awareness of attending lawyers to consider legal aid practices from the perspective of human rights rather than a legal procedure, and inform refugees of remedies to adopt once they face common challenges in access to legal aid.

The first phase of the training sessions has been held in Gaziantep on September 16, 2017 and hosted the opening speeches of Mr. Eyyüp Sabri Çepik Esq., the Executive Board Member of the Union of the Turkish Bar Associations Responsible for the Project and Mr. İskender Kahraman Esq., President of the Gaziantep Bar Association. The trainings have been organised in cooperation with Gaziantep and Kilis Bar Associations, with the contribution of the representatives from UNDP Turkey and SIDA and support of the acaemdicians specialised in the field and attended by 44 lawyers. . The participants took active part in the training, providing opinions and suggestions concerning legal aid services. Their assessments are intended to provide inputs for the “Strategic Document” and “Road Map” to be produced by the end of the project.